Date:         Wed, 3 Apr 1996 20:12:37 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         stirling@rof.net (James Cohen)
Subject:      Re: 68: What is this damnable noise???

It would help if you told us what else you did to trouble shoot.
Did you:
A) Turn the engine off once the noise was going to see if it stopped?  that
would eliminate or point to mains.

B) Push in the clutch and/or shift into neutral with and without the engine
on?  That would isolate the trans.

C)  Close all the windows/open all the windows in combination with the last
two suggestions.

D) Do all the above at different speeds?

E) Spin the wheels by hand (jacked up, obviously) to see if there is
bearing noise?

F) Check the exhaust and manifold *VERY* carefully for small leaks that
would tend to make more noise at higher revs.

G) Reved up the engine (steady) while standing still and while moving and
in neutral.

All this the most basic kind of troubleshooting.  I hope you have done it
all.  If you haven't then replacing the wheel bearings is nothing more than
a shot in the dark and a probale waste of time and money. There are a lot
of things in a bus that can make noise including a fan belt that is too
loose.  If you want to stop it and want us to help give us more info.

Good luck
James
'67 deluxe
'71,81,'85 Westies





>
>No consensus, certainly. Majority opinion has it that it is wheel bearings
>(just not the bearing I changed). A substantial minority think that it is a
>large flat surface vibrating and making an acoustic chamber of the inside
>of the bus. Then there are your splinter groups, heretics, eccentrics and
>radicals, each with an opinion. ;)
>
>It seems to me that it is probably not caused by air movement. I am not
>firm on this because it sure does *sound* that way, that is the character
>of the noise, but there is the fact that the noise is completely silent in
>curves, even fairly gentle ones. A curve shouldn't cause a shift in air
>movement substantial enough to cause the noise to cease immediately, seems
>to me--and if there is a side wind I should sometimes have the noise be
>louder in a curve than on a straight. But that never happens. This all goes
>for movement of the fiberglas top, too. I should notice some correlation
>between wind direction and wind speed, and the presence of the noise; but I
>don't.
>
>So I'm betting that the genesis of it is mechanical and it's being
>amplified by the body of the bus. This weekend I'll get new seals and
>repack the other three wheel bearings, then see if the noise changes or
>goes away. One person said that he'd had this exact same thing happen and
>solved it by rotating tires front-to-back, so I'll do that while I have the
>wheels off. If the noise stops then, I'll never know what caused it (unless
>I find some blue bearings), but WTF. I just want it fixed. If none of that
>works, I'll...decide what to try next. ;)
>
>The bearings I pulled out last week, I threw away. They looked fine, but I
>was pretty sure they were the problem and I was too busy patting my
>conceited self on the back for knowing where to look for the problem to do
>any actual *thinking*. <smolder> Forty dollars' worth of perfectly good
>spare bearings right in the trash.
>
>--Ken
>  '71 Bus, '68 Westy

'67 deluxe
'71,81,'85 Westies